


The Good Samaritan

by Avengerz



Category: Black Panther (2018), Black Panther (Comics), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Prostitution, Sugar Daddy!T'Challa, because it's prostitution, hooker!Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 12:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7463688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avengerz/pseuds/Avengerz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony knows how to play the game, how to flirt and bare his neck and entice strangers just to stay alive. This man, though, with his strange accent and sparkling smile, he's something different. Tony's not sure how to handle it.</p>
<p>OR: Tony's a hooker and T'Challa just wants to help him out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good Samaritan

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt on [ImagineIronPanther](http://imagineironpanther.tumblr.com): "It's cold tonight, the wind cuts to the bone, and no matter how tightly Tony wraps his arms around himself, he can't seem to escape the chill. (Mind finishing?)"
> 
> Why do I always put Tony in awful situations? Why do I always turn T'Challa into a sugar daddy? I wish I knew.
> 
> Please take note of the tags, because although there's nothing explicit, there's themes of underage and dub-con sex throughout this fic, as in accordance with a prostitution AU.

It’s cold tonight, the wind cuts to the bone, and no matter how tightly Tony wraps his arms around himself, he can’t seem to escape the chill. “Shit,” he whispers to himself, the word nothing but a cloud puff in the frigid air. There’s no one around to hear him; the streets all but abandoned for a few blocks in each direction. The occasional car passes, bringing a rush of cold air that Tony flinches back from.

His only company are his co-workers, and they mutter their own curses on their own street corners. Parker sniffles, and Tony turns to look at him. The boy’s huddled up against the door of a long-closed pawn shop, wrapped in Tony’s sweater and swiping at his running nose.

“Hey there, kid, watch it. It’s only November, you can’t be getting a cold on me now.” His words come out more concerned than gruff, and Tony wishes that he’d learned how to be hard.

“I’m sorry Mr. Stark,” the kid says, voice already raspy. “I’ll get better soon, don’t worry.” Parker forces himself up to his feet. Tony frowns as he sways, clutching to the brick to steady himself. He steps forward, ignoring the boy’s mumbled protestations, to press the back of his hand to the boy’s forehead.

“Jesus, kid, you’re burning up!”

“No, I’m-I’m fine.” Parker’s eyes are glazed, but he clutches to Tony’s thin t-shirt with surprising strength. “I can still work.”

Tony scowls. “Like hell you can. No john’s gonna want you like this, anyways. Look, you’re sick and it’s a low-traffic night anyways. Go home.” It’s a logical argument, and Parker nods his weary consent to it. Tony watches as he shuffles into the alley, in the general direction of their shitty one-room apartment.

On some of the worst days, he almost regrets taking in the thin teenager he’d found whoring himself out on Tony’s corner. Money was tight when it was just himself to feed; now it’s all but impossible to buy anything but the basic necessities of food. Peter does his best to help bring in money, but Tony hates seeing him work, legal age of consent or no. He’s older, more experienced, still in the prime of his life, and between this and the minor appliance repairs he does for their neighbors, Tony can support them.

Usually, though, he’s grateful for the boy, for the loyalty and companionship and an intelligent mind to talk to; all difficult things to find in their line of work. Peter’s a good kid, and Tony’s glad he found him before anyone else did.

Still, with Parker out of commission, Tony’s going to have to work even harder, especially if they’re going to have to buy medicine. That’s easier said than done, though, and Tony looks up and down the empty street with something close to despair.

With perfect timing, his stomach growls, apparently not satisfied with the meagre fare of toast and watered-down coffee he’s been living off of for the last few days. “You shut up,” he hisses at it.

This, Tony thinks sourly, is a perfect moment to curse his father’s long-rotted corpse yet again. The drunkard lost the company, killed himself and Tony’s mother in one blow, left Tony in ruins at only fifteen, watching helplessly as Obadiah swooped in and snatched up the remains of their tattered empire. “Fuck you, Howard.”

Another wave of cold wind gusts down the empty street and Tony remembers how useless it is to curse long-dead men. Tony wraps his arms around himself and wonders miserably if his life could get any worse.

He shouldn’t have tempted the universe. A car comes roaring down the street - a nice car, something foreign and beautiful, too nice for this part of town - and manages to splash through the only puddle in a five-mile radius, left over from last week’s rain. Tony gets soaked.

“Oh great,” he says loudly to the accompaniment of the other hooker’s snickers. “Fucking wonderful. This is exactly what I needed.” He plucks despairingly at the thin t-shirt now plastered to his torso, white stained brown with whatever filth was lurking in the gutter. The wind picks up, and Tony shivers. No way he’s going to be seducing anyone looking like this. “Goddamnit.”

Then there’s a screech of brakes, and Tony watches in bemusement as the car slowly begins to back up. It stops in the street in front of Tony. The tinted window in the backseat rolls down, and a man smiles out at him, vaguely sheepish, teeth brilliantly white against his dark skin. “I apologize for splashing you,” he says, the barest trace of an accent Tony can’t place tinting his words. “My temporary driver is a little enthusiastic.”

Tony blinks at him for a moment in puzzlement. He’s not sure what to do with an apology, but when a man pulls up in a car and rolls down his window to talk to him, Tony knows what he’s supposed to do.

“Oh, that’s alright,” he drawls and stalks a few steps closer to the car. “It’s just a bit of water.” Tony slouches, just a little, pops out a hip and tilts his head in a way that accentuates the line of his neck. “I can handle a lot more than that.” He looks up at the man through his lashes, smirks.

The man’s smile flickers for just a moment. “Still, I’m terribly sorry.” He flicks a gaze up and down Tony, but it’s not the leer Tony’s used to - It’s calm, vaguely concerned, and Tony suddenly feels laid bare in his thin shirt and tight jeans. “Is there somewhere I can take you, so that you might change?”

Tony doesn’t hesitate. He never never takes johns back to his apartment, and although this is a new tactic, this false concern, it’s obvious that the man just wants to get them somewhere private. “Sorry babe.” Tony leans up against the car, hooks his elbows over the window ledge, and the man doesn’t push him away. This is it, Tony knows, he’s in, and from the jealous looks he can feel on his back, his fellow hookers know it too. “Maybe you could take me back to your place?”

“I’m afraid I’m only in America for a short time,” and the ridiculous thing is, the man actually sounds apologetic. “I’m staying in a hotel.”

Tony leers. “Even better.”

 

Tony’s not entirely certain what happens, but some time between sliding onto Italian leather seats (he hates that he still recognizes the luxury in the purr of the car’s engine) and overt flirting with the strangely bemused man, he ends up in a booth, staring at a burger and a veritable mountain of fries, a very expensive suit jacket draped around his shoulders.

“Wait, hold up.” The man looks up at him, a fry halfway to his mouth, and somehow he doesn’t look ridiculous, sitting in his clean-cut Brioni suit in this greasy diner. “What’s happening here?”

The man looks down at the burgers in front of them, then back at Tony. “We’re sampling some of your American cuisine.” He frowns. “Is everything always so greasy?”

Tony laughs and is surprised at himself for it. “Welcome to America, Tarzan. The land of baseball and obesity. Does everyone eat super healthy wherever you come from?”

“Of course not. We enjoy our so-called ‘junk food,’ but we know how to limit ourselves, unlike Americans.” The tone is gently teasing and the smile on the man’s face is amused, but the insult, however mild and unintentional, brings Tony back to himself.

“I’ll have to agree with that,” he purrs, leaning across the table. “I’ve never been very good at holding back when I want something.”

“Do you not want your fries, then?”

Tony blinks, leans back. “What?”

“Your fries.” The man gestures towards the plate in front of him. “I assumed you would appreciate the traditional burger and fries, was I wrong?”

“No, no, I-” Tony looks down at the food - and fuck it looks delicious, but he never eats on a job, he’s learned he can never trust the food, not even here at a restaurant - and back at the man. “I didn’t ask you to buy me anything,” he says, defensive. “You can’t take this out of my fee.”

Something like pain flashes across the man’s features, so fast that Tony thinks he must have imagined it. “Of course not.”

“Oh.” Tony’s not sure if he can trust that, but he’s also starving. With a mental shrug, he digs into the burger. The only person who might miss him is Peter.

The food is great, as is the conversation. Tony learns that the man is in town for the FinDEVr tech conference and his name is T’Challa. “I’m Edward,” Tony says, because he knows how this game works, and T’Challa looks at him like he knows it too.

The topic spirals out of Tony’s control then, and some forty-five minutes later he finds himself waving a fry around as he eagerly expounds upon the possibilities of nanotechnology in dozens of different fields.

“…and medical use, of course!” Ketchup splatters against his styrofoam cup of coke as he gestures, and Tony doesn’t even notice. “Imagine nano tech implants tracking your blood pressure, your iron levels, alerting you of any danger, diagnosing diseases before they barely have time to form! I mean, we’d never be surprised by a heart attack again - probably ‘cause there never would be any!”

T’Challa chuckles lowly. “You have many excellent ideas, Edward,” and Tony’s heart sinks to somewhere in his stomach because he knows, he knows, how stupid is he, that whore’s aren’t supposed to think.

He drops the fry onto his mostly-empty plate, sits back in the booth, lowers his gaze. “I’ve got another idea,” he says, that perfect mix of innocent and shameless that he’d learned from blank-faced Natasha, years ago. “How about we move this conversation to a bed?”

T’Challa frowns. “Edward,” and the name sounds wrong and false on his lips. “I didn’t invite you with the intent to sleep with you.”

“Who says we’ll be doing any sleeping?” Tony says, flippant to hide the confusion.

T’Challa reaches for Tony’s hand, slow enough that he manages to avoid flinching. “You are a good man, Edward, intelligent and amusing and far too clever for your situation. I’d like to help you escape this life, if you’d let me.”

Tony stares at him for a moment, frozen, before he yanks his hand away with a scoff. “What is this, Pretty Woman? You can’t heal a hooker with some fries, bud.”

“I know,” T’Challa catches Tony’s gaze and holds it, something resolute and impossibly kind in his eyes. “But I think it is a good start.”

Irritatingly, Tony finds himself flushing under that gaze. He looks down to hide the blush at the table as he thinks it over. Tony knows more than anyone that appearances can be deceiving, but T’Challa seems to be a genuinely kind man, and Tony has to admit that the guy kind of won Tony over with the burger. Goddamn delicious.

Tony looks up to meet T’Challa’s gaze. “Alright.” He’s probably going to end up hanging from his wrists in some dungeon, but whatever. Maybe he can steal some of this guy’s money for Peter before that happens. “Try your best to reform me, Samaritan. Just don’t expect the sarcasm to disappear.”

T’Challa smiles, something like relief and something like hope and Tony can’t take his own fears seriously. “I wouldn’t wish it any other way.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find more IronPanther at [ImagineIronPanther](http://imagineironpanther.tumblr.com) or myself at [anthonyfuckingstark](http://anthonyfuckingstark.tumblr.com).
> 
> Kudos and comments are cherished.


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